


The Path of Righteousness

by jehane



Category: Les Misérables RPF
Genre: Chains, M/M, UST, guard room scene, method acting, on-set shenanigans, pre-mayoral ass, references to unnegotiated BDSM power play, trailer shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 05:18:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17574632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/jehane
Summary: Ezekiel 25:17: The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil.





	The Path of Righteousness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



> Thanks to S for the beta!

Javert was _different_. Difficult to understand, certainly, and even more, to portray. But how important it was to do justice to this man, so often portrayed as a primary-colours sadistic villain, driven to crush the honest hero beneath his heel — when in truth what he was was a dedicated public servant with a strict moral compass and an absolute conviction in his own righteousness. Hugo had said of him: _Javert personified justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil_ , and the prison guard, who’d risen to become an inspector of police, had held everyone to those impossible standards, including himself.

David knew he’d get it eventually. In the meantime, he had made copious notes in his script and in the margins of his Hapgood translation.

He’d never been to this north-eastern part of France. Just south of the Belgian border, Sedan was striking and historic, its medieval castle and location on the river Bièvre the perfect backdrop for their prison set. But, like his character, it was also different — chilly and remote, a far cry from their home across the Atlantic, where the kids were in the midst of the school term. David missed them, of course, felt Jessica’s absence like a sore tooth, but in truth he almost preferred it this way: Javert’s personality was difficult enough to wear without having it rub up against the family he cherished. 

Javert had no wife or children. Early on, Andrew had idly mentioned that his original script had called for Javert to have sex with a prostitute, to “clear out the pipes”, but that scene had eventually been deemed too out of character for the implacable, solitary inspector. The man’s sole passion had been the police. That, and the convict he’d pursued over France for decades.

There were good days and less good days on the Sedan set, amid the mud, blood and sweat of the prison hulks and the stone walls of the bagne. This had been one of the less good ones. 

Fortunately, it hadn’t been a particularly important scene — they needed to shoot a couple of set-ups to the big public execution with the Toulon firing squad — but it grated on him nevertheless. The weather had been unusually hot, which had caught them all off-guard after the freezing cold of Belgium, and it had affected the mood on set. Tom had had to run them through their paces over and over again, and still the soldiers hadn’t been forming up perfectly, the prisoners kept forgetting their places, and David himself remained somehow frustratingly separate from the irreproachable guard in whose skin he needed to make his home. 

Tom had called an early halt to proceedings, and David had been returned to his trailer while it was still light outside — to mull over his notes and his performance. 

It didn’t help that _Dominic_ hadn’t been having any difficulties. His co-star was a lovely man — he also had four kids with Catherine, the sort of coincidence that only happened in Victor Hugo novels — and a phenomenal choice for the role, which he’d taken to like a duck to water. From the word go, when everyone else was just feeling out their characters, he’d completely immersed himself in Jean Valjean.

Perhaps that was the problem: Dominic was _too_ lovely, earnest and open, a giant, tireless bundle of energy whose charisma seemed to draw in everyone on the set. He was universally adored. He could do no wrong in Tom’s eyes: every take he was in was, “Perfect, Dom, perfect!” Julia and Emelia from hair and makeup spent hours patiently putting extensions in his beard and prison sores on his perfect skin, and seemed to spend even more hours afterwards singing his praises. Their set was on a strict social media lockdown, but between takes the extras and crew milled around him anyway, as if they couldn’t get enough of his star power.

Dominic took all this adulation in his stride and with his wide, carefree grin, as he took everything else. Catherine had spent the first week with them in Limburg, but after she’d left Dominic had embraced his role as the unofficial leader of the troupe, holding court with the cast and crew at the nearest pub after the day's shooting was over. Here in Sedan, he'd co-opted a couple of the lads who'd played the Toulon guards as his unofficial wingmen; it seemed Gordon and Ashley and he could put away twice their collective body weight in French beer, and then Dominic would show up for the next day’s shoot word-perfect and completely in majestic character. 

David himself had stayed strictly away from these post-work shenanigans, and away from Dominic. David wasn’t a Stanislavsky purist by any stretch, not like some of his classically Method-adherent counterparts, but in this particular role, he’d discovered that channelling Javert’s malevolence towards Valjean meant that he, David, also needed to try to stir up a mirroring animosity in order to keep in character. 

But when Dominic was this naturally talented, making Valjean’s sweaty convict skin shine with a credibility that took even David’s breath away, and this guileless and charming off-set, it wasn’t easy to stay away.

Then again, David wasn’t in this business because it was easy. His job — _Javert’s_ job — was to make Valjean’s life miserable, and David needed to keep up his distance from his co-star for the sake of the show, no matter how talented and charming that co-star was.

 

+

 

It was what he’d said when Dominic had first come to his hotel room in Limburg with his own copy of the Hapgood, dressed in old sweats and a threadbare tee-shirt from some band David didn’t recognise. In the dim corridor, his boundless enthusiasm almost seemed an innate source of light.

“Missed you at the pub today! I thought we could work our lines some more, you know, run ideas on the lads’ motivations. First scene tomorrow, don’t want it to be shite.”

Thrown off-guard, David found himself letting Dominic in. 

The BBC budgets were frugal: the room was small, and there was no chair for Dominic to throw himself onto. He settled for parking himself on the edge of David’s bed as he cracked the book open. The rangy sprawl of his muscular legs against the sheets was unsettling to David in a way he couldn’t define. 

David cleared his throat, but Dominic had already started talking. “You know Javert’s line in the Toulon scene, about how they’re both alike? I can’t find it in the book. But it makes so much fucking sense, you know? I mean, I’m thinking — _Valjean_ is thinking — what’s the deal with this guy, why is Javert so obsessed with him from the start? I figure it could just be because Javert fancies him, but of course it’s more than that.”

David had had the same struggles with his character’s motivations — it was one of the central interrogations of the text — but hearing it laid out in these crude terms put his back right up. He felt a rather Javert-like bristle run through him. “Excuse me?”

“Most people are motivated by sex, aren’t they?” Dominic squinted at him. Up close, his lashes looked golden, and unnaturally long. “And it seems that back in the day, old Victor Hugo shagged anything with a pulse.”

It wasn’t as if this was an unexpected comment. After all, Andrew himself had mentioned wanting to sex up the venerable old property that was _Les Misérables_ , and had even suggested that Javert’s obsession with his nemesis might have stemmed from a twisted kind of love. But somehow in Dominic’s London accents the very suggestion sounded outrageous, and, as it happened, utterly filthy. 

David found himself telling Dominic this, in prim tones worthy of his stoic character, who would surely have stooped to nothing as crass. He added, “Maybe that’s true for most of the characters _you_ play, but that’s too obvious an answer, even for Hugo.”

Dominic gave him a rakish, unrepentant grin. It was much more attractive than it should have been. “What, Martin Luther King never lose his head over sex?”

“Dr. King was too much in charge of himself,” David said. He remembered the Selma set as if it were yesterday: how it had felt to inhabit the great man for those too-short, glorious months. “Even with the affairs he had, it was never all about the sex for him? He was too much in charge of everything and everyone around him; God knows he needed to be.”

“You think Javert’s like that? He’s definitely a take-charge kind of guy.”

David thought about it. “Javert would like to think he’s in charge, of himself as well as everyone else,” he said, slowly. “And for the most part he is. He hates evil, and he hates Valjean because he sees in Valjean the evil he’s trying to crush out in himself. That part’s implied in the book, I think.”

“Show me,” Dominic said, and David sat on the bed beside him and took custody of the volume. He leafed through its well-worn pages until he reached the first Javert chapters. 

“ _Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,—those who attack it and those who guard it; he had no choice except between these two._ ”

He stopped reading when he felt Dominic’s gaze on him. The man’s gaze was as dark and inscrutable as Valjean’s, his pupils thick with some impenetrable emotion.

Dominic took the book back, and ran a blunt finger down its pages; he too began to read aloud. “ _Between his eyes there was a permanent, central frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed up and terrible; his air that of ferocious command, His glance was like a gimlet, cold and piercing… And, withal, a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, with never a diversion. It was implacable duty._ ” 

He frowned, then added, “Not that this disproves my sex theory, as it happens. It’s the frustrated virgins who always need to be in charge!”

Again, there was that rakish grin, completely unrepentant. _Challenging_ him, of all the things. A prickly heat crawled under David’s collar: suddenly, Dominic was too large, too demanding, and much too close. 

David found himself getting to his feet. He needed to put some distance between them. His voice sounded as if he’d been caught off-guard once again: “You know, Dominic, this isn’t such a good idea. We should save it for the scene, keep it fresh... And if Javert loathes Valjean like he loathes the evil in himself, I should be keeping my distance from you.”

Dominic had stayed silent for a beat, and then he, too, got up from the bed, making sure to give David the widest possible berth in the cramped quarters.

“Wow. That is some fucked-up level of method acting.”

Dominic sounded hurt, though David wasn’t entirely sure why. “Yeah, well, it’s sometimes what I need to do. There’s a malevolence to Javert, and the nature of his relationship with Valjean is so acrimonious, that it might be better for our scenes if we didn’t get too close. That way, we can put the energy to good use.”

Dominic shrugged. “On the Wire, in the beginning, the guys who played cops kept to themselves, and so did the criminals. Don't think it made a difference to the performance, though.”

“I’m sure it did, actually. It’s not you, mate, it’s me.”

Dominic said, tartly. “Thought you'd be too much of a gentleman to say a thing like that.”

That stung; his turn to sound hurt. “Look, I never say things I don’t mean.”

Dominic had paused in his path to the door. There was a frown on his broad, handsome face. “C’mon, you’re an actor’s actor. Actors bullshit all the time.”

“Not me.” David swallowed, the frisson of pleasure at the compliment soured by the look in his co-star’s eyes. “So when Javert’s hating on Valjean, it needs to be real for me.”

“Which definitely sounds like my cue.” Faux-casual, Dominic had pointed a finger at him in lieu of a proper goodbye. “Keep it real, Davey.”

 

+

 

Since then, over the weeks that followed, David had indeed tried to keep it real; to keep away from Dominic, and keep strictly to the narrow path of righteousness, in order to bring Javert’s malevolence home to Valjean. 

It became a running joke on set: here was David Oyelowo perpetually in character as Javert, with his pristine uniform and haughty demeanour, holding himself above the filthy criminals and the actors who portrayed them, as if he was too good for everyone, including the man who played Jean Valjean. It made David even more determined to stick to his guns and to keep himself apart, like Javert himself would have done — that is, when he wasn’t menacing Valjean and doing his best to make the man’s life a living hell.

All these weeks of simmering enmity culminated in their scene in the guard room, with Valjean hanging from his wrists in chains, and Javert murmuring threats in his personal space. Dominic was magnificent, effortlessly filled with Valjean’s formless anger and helplessness. He had very few lines in this scene, but his hot, sullen gaze was an eloquent challenge. 

David would have been envious if he’d had the focus to spare on professional jealousy. As it was, he was having trouble concentrating on his lines while standing this close to Dominic’s defiant glare, the livid bruises painted on his flesh, surrounded by the smell of his sweat — and, underneath it, of bare skin.

Javert despised the challenge in the prisoner’s eyes, much as he despised any challenge to his authority. It drove him to affirm his power by any means possible. In Toulon, the whip was the default tool of enforcement, though an even more malevolent guard might use his own belt to administer more personal punishment. 

David contented himself by spitting his menace into the prisoner’s face. “Why did you do it? Saving that man’s life, why? To make a fool of me?”

Dominic — Valjean — was silent, and David stepped in closer, speaking Hugo’s words as if they’d been written on his heart.

“I could have been a criminal. I was born in prison. Men like us have only two choices. To prey on society, or to guard it. You chose the former, I the latter.” 

Valjean’s jaw clenched, his swollen lips set themselves in a trenchant line. The lights and cameras and technicians all fell away, and there was no one in the stifling room except for the two of them: panting, sweating, breathing each other in. 

“You’ll never win,” Javert hissed into the prisoner’s ear, and Valjean shivered.

Men like us… _But I am nothing like him,_ Javert said to himself, resolutely, although David, listening, along for the ride, wasn’t at all convinced.

 

+

 

Truth be told, David couldn’t stop thinking about that scene. Possibly, if Dominic’s theory was right, Javert couldn’t either. How Dominic had looked — how Valjean had looked — how it had felt to feel challenged in the way Javert had been challenged... 

How Javert might re-assert his authority over the defiant prisoner. With the lash, perhaps, or with his belt.

David might have been determined to keep away from Dominic, but he hadn’t managed to stop thinking about him. He’d been thinking about Dominic all through today’s shoot. He was thinking about him now.

Gradually, he became aware of a hammering on the door of his trailer.

He got to his feet with some effort. The day’s shoot had been more draining than he realised; for a moment his footing was unsteady. Or maybe it was Javert’s unresolved frustrations over the prisoner’s challenge to his rightful authority.

He jerked open the door, and came face to face with Jean Valjean.

Hair and makeup had removed the extensions in his beard, but there were still traces of the bruises and welts across his face. He was wearing a robe, carelessly thrown over his costume, that left little to the imagination. 

“Valjean — Dominic —”

“I know you said you needed to stay away for Javert’s own good,” Dominic said, pressing forward urgently, “but I’m really blocked on the execution scene, and nothing else is working. I need your help —”

Though caught as much off-guard as the first time, this time David didn’t stand aside. Dominic tried to shoulder his way into the trailer; his broader body walked straight into David’s unyielding one, making a solid connection. On instinct, David thrust his slighter weight against Dominic’s in a stage-fighting throw all actors knew, and shoved Dominic against the thin trailer wall, an arm across his co-star's sternum. 

Dominic swore in surprise; he made no attempt to struggle. His handsome face was a picture of astonishment. David found himself panting through his teeth, as if he was the one held by the throat. Chest to chest, hip to hip, he could feel Dominic’s body, with its burly, boxing-trained muscles, all along his skin. 

“Is this the kind of help you need?”

“Fuck,” Dominic muttered, “maybe. David…”

“Try again, convict,” David said, and Dominic shivered like a skittish colt and murmured, “Monsieur Javert.” 

Then he shook himself: “Fuck, this method acting thing is really working for you. I’m actually shaking!”

“Better.” David hadn’t planned this, of course, but now the moment was here it made perfect sense: all the deliberately-cultivated animosity between their characters now spilling over off set as well. He didn’t let Dominic go, and Dominic didn’t try to get away, either. “Now, what was the problem?”

Dominic took a deep breath. His throat worked convulsively above David’s restricting forearm. “So, I’m angry, right? At the execution. The guards make everyone bow their heads, and I don’t bow. I’m on my knees, but I don’t bow — I lock gazes with you and I show you defiance in the only way I can. The only way Valjean can.”

He swallowed again. “But then I’m wondering: why isn’t Valjean _afraid_? Because Javert won’t let this defiance go unpunished, and Javert can take him to the guard room and have him beaten where no one can see… And why doesn’t Javert do it? Why doesn’t Javert punish him?”

“Perhaps Javert punishes him afterwards.” As soon as David said it, the images hung between them: the convict dragged from the yard and delivered to the guard room and strung up in chains for Javert’s private pleasure, the choice between the lash or the belt. The savage joy of beating the defiance from the prisoner’s flesh, of righteousness re-asserting itself, in this place of Javert’s power where there was no one to bear witness.

Another shiver ran through Dominic. Colour crawled up his ruddy cheeks. “Does he? Everything else he has to do after the execution, he makes the time to punish Valjean for a second of staring?”

“Of course he does. You know he wants to.” David heard the whip-crack of Javert’s voice: “Don’t ever question me.”

Dominic had to close his eyes; this time, away from the execution field, he bowed his head. “No. No, monsieur.” 

David stared into Dominic’s face, marvelling at the suddenness of his surrender. He was aware of the heat curling between their bodies, the thunder of his own pulse. “Are you afraid now?”

“Yes.” 

“There’s your answer.” As an afterthought, David added, “Still angry, too?”

“Yes,” Dominic said, opening his eyes, and fixing David with Valjean’s surly, suffering glare.

“Good.” David inhaled deeply through his nose and then he made himself let go. He took a step away; he discovered that he was shaking as much as Dominic was. In more of his own voice, he said, “Does that help with your motivation for the scene?”

“It absolutely fucking does.” Dominic paused. Valjean’s defiant countenance was replaced by an uncertain, conflicted look that David had no idea how to interpret. “Look, I know you just meant the show, and the scene, but when you were talking about Javert’s authority, did you really mean…?”

His voice trailed off. His eyes had reddened, as if he’d been seized by sudden emotion. David knew a little of how that felt, with Javert’s urgent need for punishment still loud in his own ears.

“Don’t overthink it,” David said to his co-star. “Use how that felt. Bring it to the scene.”

Dominic nodded. He took hold of himself with visible effort; his robe had come loose in their struggles, and now he belted it more securely around his waist. Then he asked, hesitantly, “If I lose it again, will you help me?”

“If you need it, I’ll remind you. Of _this,_ ” said David, warningly, and then he had to turn away from the reaction in Dominic’s eyes.

It was only after Dominic had staggered out of the trailer that David realised he’d actually gotten _hard_ — in response to Dominic’s tears, or his terror, or maybe it was just that, like Javert, David hadn’t gotten off in ages, and couldn’t help responding to the press of that splendid body against his. 

This wasn’t a total surprise. The Method technique had engendered even stranger physiological responses in its practitioners, and David had been in the business long enough to have seen it all.

But it would have certainly been a surprise to Javert — so convinced of his own righteous rage and authority that he would never have believed he’d be roused in this way, by the very prisoner he loathed, as a mirror of the evil he loathed in himself.

Now that David thought about it, though — collapsed in his chair, panting as if he’d run a marathon — he wasn’t so sure that _loathing_ was the right word for the emotion Javert felt for the prisoner. And in that case, this method-acting deprivation wasn’t the right approach for the character. 

Maybe Andrew was right, after all.

David eyed himself severely until his erection diminished, and then he opened his script. His notes needed _serious_ revision.

**Author's Note:**

> [BBC Miz Cast and crew.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5900600/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm) 
> 
> [David Oyelowo](http://esteliel.tumblr.com/post/181631675593/bbclesmis-buzzfeed-tv-editor-scott-bryan-critic): “What was it like making Dominic West’s life a living hell? A lot of fun! ...There is a malevolence to my character, and the nature of the relationship we play out is so acrimonious, that I had to time the moments when I could be around him, so that we could go hard in the show…I couldn’t afford to like him too much."
> 
> "[Javert](https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a25545375/les-miserables-david-oyelowo-javert-colour-blind-casting/) has a very clear moral compass from which he is operating," Oyelowo suggested. “He could have gone down a criminal path, but he chooses the path of righteousness… He is there [working as a prison guard] in order to fight against a part of himself that he loathes, and he sees that embodied in Jean Valjean and that, to me, explains his obsessive pursuit of this guy..." He wasn't entirely convinced, however, by [Andrew Davies'](https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/screenwriter-andrew-davies-brought-out-sexual-element-in-les-mis-adaptation-37614637.html) suggestion that Javert "may possibly be in love" with his nemesis Valjean. "Reshoots! We need to do reshoots!" Oyelowo laughed.
> 
> [Dominic West](https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/tv/les-mis%C3%A9rables-review-episode-two-lily-collins-plays-the-tragic-fantine-with-steeliness-and-grace/ar-BBRSZSM?li=AA5a2k): "I always like to trace motivations to sex… I said to David, 'Javert obviously fancies him!’ But he thought that was crass.” Did the rivalry extend off-set? “You’re never quite sure where the character ends and the actor starts!”


End file.
